An Invigorating End to Thanksgiving

Rarely do we pay attention to what happens after the bird has been carved and eaten, after the plates have been heaped with seconds, after the pies have been portioned out and after those final few bites have filled whatever space remains.

Right then, in that soporific interval before the bodies converge on the couches in lethargic repose, is the moment for an invigorating, resuscitating digestif.

The digestif, or digestivo, since so many good ones are Italian, stems from a centuries-old tradition after feasts of drinking a little something to calm the system and aid digestion.

These little somethings are generally alcoholic and often pharmaceutical in origin, incorporating many different herbs, spices and botanicals that were thought to have medicinal properties. One of my favorites is Barolo Chinato, a specialty of the Piedmont region of northwestern Italy, home of the great nebbiolo wines Barolo and Barbaresco.

Chinato (pronounced key-NOT-oh) is a fortified wine in which neutral spirits are infused with a combination of ingredients including quinine, called chinino in Italian, hence the name Chinato. It’s then blended with a base of Barolo wine and sweetened with sugar. As with so many folk concoctions, almost every recipe for Chinato is a carefully guarded secret. No two are alike.

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CreditSasha Maslov for The New York Times

I first had Chinato in the Barolo region maybe 15 years ago. It was winter and I had a cold, but that didn’t stop me from the irresistibly excessive meals typical in a region celebrated for the quality of its cuisine and wines.

The next morning, on a visit to the estate of Aldo Conterno, I must have seemed under the weather. After walking the vineyards and tasting the wines with Aldo’s son, Franco, we stopped into the house to say hello to the proprietor, Aldo Conterno himself. He took one look at me and went immediately to fetch an unlabeled jug from which he poured a dram into a tumbler.

“Drink this, you’ll feel better,” he told me, smiling, so I did. I remember it as a masterpiece of balance, a perfect harmony of sweet and bitter flavors, spicy with cinnamon and clove, yet intensely herbal with citrus highlights. Underneath were baritone notes from the nebbiolo wine. Not only was it delightful, but it also made me feel better, as Mr. Conterno had known it would.

You won’t find an Aldo Conterno Barolo Chinato in stores. As is true with many Barolo estates, he made it for his own use and didn’t sell it. But a few dozen estates do sell their Chinatos commercially, and you can occasionally find them in good wine shops.

One of my favorites is from the excellent Barolo producer Cappellano, which you can find for about $75 a bottle, or $50 for 500 ml. One bottle will go quite a way, as you require no more than a small portion, and once opened, the bottle will last a few weeks.

Like the Conterno, the Cappellano Chinato achieves a beautiful proportion of flavors: sweet, bitter, herbal, spice and citrus. It manages to be soothing, delicious and refreshing at the same time.

It ought to be a good one. An ancestor of the current generation of Cappellanos, Giuseppe Cappellano, a pharmacist in Serralunga d’Alba, is widely credited with inventing Barolo Chinato in the late 19th century. His aim was not only to enhance the digestion, but also to provide a remedy for a wide range of ailments beyond. I will say, unscientifically, that it works for me.

You can find a handful of other producers in stores. Their Chinatos can range from mildly bitter to lightly sweet, and while they may differ in their specific flavors, they all offer the full spectrum of flavors.

If you are at all curious about Chinatos and how they age, you can have no better destination than Maialino, the excellent Italian restaurant near Gramercy Park, where Jeff Kellogg, the wine director, has assembled an extraordinary collection of older Chinatos. While most Chinatos do not carry vintage dating, Mr. Kellogg has traced many of these, simply by their label design, to the 1950s and ’60s, and some even to the ’40s.

The older Chinatos seem to mellow with time, becoming softer and enhancing some of the signature ingredients. A rare Bartolo Mascarello Chinato seemed to have a pronounced cinnamon element, while Marcarini, Mr. Kellogg says, stands out for its flavor of orange zest.

“To me, the biggest difference is in terms of sweetness,” he said. “It also affects what dessert we put it with. We sell a lot as dessert pairings.”

Oh, did I mention? Barolo Chinato is one of the best possible partners with any sort of chocolate dessert. I can’t vouch for apple or pumpkin pie, but it couldn’t hurt.

Beyond Chinato, any number of popular digestivos can add an aromatic and perhaps invigorating punctuation mark to the feast. A small glass of one of the bitter Italian digestivos known as amari, which also incorporates quinine into its proprietary recipes, can be just the necessary final flavor.

Hundreds of amari are produced, including those like Cynar, which are made of artichokes, or others made from walnuts. I prefer the fernets, in particular the famous, bracingly bitter Fernet-Branca. Others like sweeter versions.

France, too, has its many digestifs, like Chartreuse, the infused herbal liqueur with a recipe zealously guarded by a handful of monks. I’m partial to a simple pastis, perhaps because I love the flavors of anise and licorice, which dominate, though good pastis will offer an intriguing underlying complexity.

Pernod and Ricard are the most famous brands, though I like another, Henri Bardouin, for its kaleidoscopic flavors. Serve it with water, which will render it beautifully cloudy, about five parts to one part pastis.

Though I like pastis as a digestif, it’s better known as an aperitif. You can drink Barolo Chinato as an aperitif, too. Mr. Kellogg of Maialino serves it that way with a spritz of soda water, and others make a cocktail reminiscent of a negroni with it. But, he says, Barolo Chinato works best after the meal.

Of course, almost all digestivos are alcoholic. Barolo Chinato is fortified up to 16 or 17 percent alcohol, while distillates like pastis are much higher, 45 percent or so. If you’re relatively sober, they can be the perfect palliative. But if you have already had a lot to drink, you may want to consider an herbal tea.